Uh, my Lyra works just like a USB memory stick and requires no extra drivers. That this player requires drivers to "update its index" smacks of laziness on the part of the developers.
VeriSign lost any shred of respect from me when they implemented SiteFinder. I'm against them gaining any more power and I suspect if they're convinced of their control they will do this again.
(By the by, I think this whole "who has control" thing is really over the top anyway; nobody's going to let the Internet "disintegrate", it's far too important no matter who's in control.)
If you want your online app to not be used by scripts such as this, implement a CAPTCHA. Sure, people could still use it if they wanted to input a bunch of letters for every single chunk of their file...
Indeed, this is the loop the United States (and many other countries, to be fair) are in:
1. Campaign contributions elect a president. 2. President and his supporting cabinet have veto power over the laws. 3. Therefore, it is not in the interest of the president or anyone in top power to change the form of campaign contributions, except perhaps to extend them such that their chances of reelection go up due to more contributions. 4. Goto 1.
This is why I believe if things continue on their current course for the US, there will be a revolution in some form. It probably won't happen for another ten years or so, and hopefully things change by then, but if they don't, I doubt the people will continue to stand for it.
And because I'm bored and I like PHP, my reply to all of the above:
* PHP sucks.
PHP has functions for practically anything you can imagine. Of course, I'll get into why it doesn't suck in the replies below, as this is a bit too general.
* PHP is for n00bs.
PHP is for developers who want to get something done quickly. The syntax is very easy to learn, and variables are loosely typed, but in my experience this doesn't mean that the language is flawed; it means that one can code up something without having to worry about unnecessary things like pointers, variable conversion and the like. And to be honest, in website scripting I've never come across a need for more advanced syntax than PHP provides in my five or more years of using it.
* PHP is usually poorly written.
This, unfortunately, is usually true. Because PHP is easy to use, it is often used by people who don't want to worry about writing good code either. But like everything else, there are varying grades of professionalism. PHP *can* be written well, it's just a case of taking the time to do so.
* PHP is a scripting language and you can't do anything but write web pages with it.
Scripting language, yes. But it most certainly can be used for things other than websites.
* PHP sucks because the function names are inconsistent.
True, but this is why one has a manual. I've never been all that concerned about it.
* PHP isn't capable of working in a real enterprise.
I haven't had experience with integrating PHP into an "enterprise" situation personally, but I'll refer you to Zend's Enterprise PHP page for various reasons why PHP is indeed ready for the enterprise.
* Real coders use Perl.
Real coders use the tool that best fits the problem.
* PHP doesn't scale.
Now THIS is something I can definitely refute. I work for a company that creates mods for a PHP / Smarty-based online shopping cart known as X-Cart and I can tell you, PHP scales wonderfully, otherwise stores wouldn't use it as a base of their business operations. X-Cart is on the order of hundreds of thousands of lines of PHP code, and very commonly has tens of thousands of customers accessing it concurrently.
And yeah, I know you were joking, but hey, I was bored.;^)
You're pretty much correct. PHP is a lot closer to JSP or ASP than Java, and yes, it can violate separation of logic and presentation. However, you can use the Smarty templating library to separate code and presentation (and I recommend this to anyone learning PHP, because embedding PHP in HTML makes for very sloppy and nigh unreadable code).
My girlfriend's family in Texas was on one of the baby Bells (I forget which, probably BellSouth or SBC) and they switched to Time Warner digital phone service, with the free long distance. They probably got less ads from the partners, but not from the company itself, no sirree! It started dialing them every half hour with COMPLETELY AUTOMATED "come back" messages that they could only stop by redialing the company and waiting half an hour on hold!
Monopoly agreements with cable and telephone companies such that each one will own a certain geographic area and not compete with one another need to be outlawed. I want COMPETITION for my dollar, not a lack of choice.
Nobody (at least in my area of southwestern Ontario) really uses a 24 hour clock here. I can remember seeing them in public schools but that's about it. We use AM / PM.
If they do this, the Internet will route around it.
This, I can guarantee. If the Internet is changed such that it is no longer possible to be anonymous, people will either make an anonymous, separate internet, or an anonymous peer to peer service that goes through several anonymous peers before reaching its location, a la Freenet.
Oh, come on. Half the ideas you said for prepaid airtime are easily hacked because they are calculated clientside. The fact is that these guys were in no way trying to "force others to innovate", they took the idea that EVERYONE ELSE IS USING and patented it through a broken patent system that allowed them to do something insane like this.
Don't give the patent system the benefit of a doubt, it's horribly broken whether you think it encourages innovation or not.
Is that what it does? When I went to the demo page, all I saw was a bolded Mozilla. I looked at the source and it appears to have something to do with <sourcetext> but it didn't do anything to my browser. I was disappointed; now I have no excuse to goof off while I'm supposed to be working:^(
HP outsources their tech support (at least for consumer-level products like laptops and desktops) so it's really random who / where you'll get. Usually it'll be Canada or India if you're calling from the States.
Though I wonder what happens if the internal clock on those hardware key generators gets slow? If the key is generated every 30 seconds, you'd think time would be an issue.
Sure, if you want to view it that way. My relationship with my girlfriend keeps me from being lonely, and sure, I might be a bit obsessed with her.
But I do know that we can go ages without getting things like cards and flowers and diamonds for each other and still be fine. We aren't staying together just so that we can "feel better than others" either, it's so we feel better about ourselves and our own lives because we make each other's life better just by being there.
About a year ago, I was a very dark, slightly depressed person (though you wouldn't see it from talking to me as I keep such things fairly well hidden). After meeting my girlfriend, my life started to become better almost immediately. And it didn't happen for the newfound lack of loneliness, or because I might be making people without what I have feel worse about themselves (of which I really regret if I've ever done). It also had nothing to do with fulfilling some lustful need we both had; the first few months of our relationship was online and our lives were still much better than they were before.
The reason our lives are better is because we love each other.
We would do anything for each other. We will help each other out in dark times. We're happy to just sit around and do nothing if it means being together.
And I really hope you find that some day because it is something beautiful.
It'll come from an open source equivalent. It'll take a while, but I guarantee if their product isn't very good, someone (or a group of someones) will come up with a better OSS equivalent.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, my Lyra works just like a USB memory stick and requires no extra drivers. That this player requires drivers to "update its index" smacks of laziness on the part of the developers.
*whoosh*
Nuff said.
Thanks, much appreciated, didn't know that was there :^)
VeriSign lost any shred of respect from me when they implemented SiteFinder. I'm against them gaining any more power and I suspect if they're convinced of their control they will do this again.
(By the by, I think this whole "who has control" thing is really over the top anyway; nobody's going to let the Internet "disintegrate", it's far too important no matter who's in control.)
I know it's spelled Bierce, Slashdot's stupid comment limit length prevents me from having it there.
...inciteful...
;^)
Now THAT'S a moderation they need to have on politics.slashdot.org.
If you want your online app to not be used by scripts such as this, implement a CAPTCHA. Sure, people could still use it if they wanted to input a bunch of letters for every single chunk of their file...
Indeed, this is the loop the United States (and many other countries, to be fair) are in:
1. Campaign contributions elect a president.
2. President and his supporting cabinet have veto power over the laws.
3. Therefore, it is not in the interest of the president or anyone in top power to change the form of campaign contributions, except perhaps to extend them such that their chances of reelection go up due to more contributions.
4. Goto 1.
This is why I believe if things continue on their current course for the US, there will be a revolution in some form. It probably won't happen for another ten years or so, and hopefully things change by then, but if they don't, I doubt the people will continue to stand for it.
It sounds like what you created was a hack in the first place so I'm not surprised... :^P
SQLite is meant to be embedded, and isn't really comparable to MySQL (consider, if you will, that SQLite doesn't actually include an GRANT or REVOKE statements).
Apples and oranges.
And because I'm bored and I like PHP, my reply to all of the above:
;^)
* PHP sucks.
PHP has functions for practically anything you can imagine. Of course, I'll get into why it doesn't suck in the replies below, as this is a bit too general.
* PHP is for n00bs.
PHP is for developers who want to get something done quickly. The syntax is very easy to learn, and variables are loosely typed, but in my experience this doesn't mean that the language is flawed; it means that one can code up something without having to worry about unnecessary things like pointers, variable conversion and the like. And to be honest, in website scripting I've never come across a need for more advanced syntax than PHP provides in my five or more years of using it.
* PHP is usually poorly written.
This, unfortunately, is usually true. Because PHP is easy to use, it is often used by people who don't want to worry about writing good code either. But like everything else, there are varying grades of professionalism. PHP *can* be written well, it's just a case of taking the time to do so.
* PHP is a scripting language and you can't do anything but write web pages with it.
Scripting language, yes. But it most certainly can be used for things other than websites.
* PHP sucks because the function names are inconsistent.
True, but this is why one has a manual. I've never been all that concerned about it.
* PHP is slow.
Actually, it's really not. Take a look at this comparison between different CGI modules for Apache: PHP actually outdoes Perl here.
* PHP isn't capable of working in a real enterprise.
I haven't had experience with integrating PHP into an "enterprise" situation personally, but I'll refer you to Zend's Enterprise PHP page for various reasons why PHP is indeed ready for the enterprise.
* Real coders use Perl.
Real coders use the tool that best fits the problem.
* PHP doesn't scale.
Now THIS is something I can definitely refute. I work for a company that creates mods for a PHP / Smarty-based online shopping cart known as X-Cart and I can tell you, PHP scales wonderfully, otherwise stores wouldn't use it as a base of their business operations. X-Cart is on the order of hundreds of thousands of lines of PHP code, and very commonly has tens of thousands of customers accessing it concurrently.
And yeah, I know you were joking, but hey, I was bored.
You're pretty much correct. PHP is a lot closer to JSP or ASP than Java, and yes, it can violate separation of logic and presentation. However, you can use the Smarty templating library to separate code and presentation (and I recommend this to anyone learning PHP, because embedding PHP in HTML makes for very sloppy and nigh unreadable code).
Maybe I won't be able to get some work done today ;^)
(/me has an entirely Internet-based job)
My girlfriend's family in Texas was on one of the baby Bells (I forget which, probably BellSouth or SBC) and they switched to Time Warner digital phone service, with the free long distance. They probably got less ads from the partners, but not from the company itself, no sirree! It started dialing them every half hour with COMPLETELY AUTOMATED "come back" messages that they could only stop by redialing the company and waiting half an hour on hold!
Monopoly agreements with cable and telephone companies such that each one will own a certain geographic area and not compete with one another need to be outlawed. I want COMPETITION for my dollar, not a lack of choice.
Nobody (at least in my area of southwestern Ontario) really uses a 24 hour clock here. I can remember seeing them in public schools but that's about it. We use AM / PM.
If they do this, the Internet will route around it.
This, I can guarantee. If the Internet is changed such that it is no longer possible to be anonymous, people will either make an anonymous, separate internet, or an anonymous peer to peer service that goes through several anonymous peers before reaching its location, a la Freenet.
Oh, come on. Half the ideas you said for prepaid airtime are easily hacked because they are calculated clientside. The fact is that these guys were in no way trying to "force others to innovate", they took the idea that EVERYONE ELSE IS USING and patented it through a broken patent system that allowed them to do something insane like this.
Don't give the patent system the benefit of a doubt, it's horribly broken whether you think it encourages innovation or not.
I like how it ends.
Microsoft should start putting this code in all its mass mailings ;^)
Firefox 1.0.7 on WinXP SP2 here and I'm also not affected.
Is that what it does? When I went to the demo page, all I saw was a bolded Mozilla. I looked at the source and it appears to have something to do with <sourcetext> but it didn't do anything to my browser. I was disappointed; now I have no excuse to goof off while I'm supposed to be working :^(
HP outsources their tech support (at least for consumer-level products like laptops and desktops) so it's really random who / where you'll get. Usually it'll be Canada or India if you're calling from the States.
Their IT department seems to be on the ball.
Though I wonder what happens if the internal clock on those hardware key generators gets slow? If the key is generated every 30 seconds, you'd think time would be an issue.
OK.
Sure, if you want to view it that way. My relationship with my girlfriend keeps me from being lonely, and sure, I might be a bit obsessed with her.
But I do know that we can go ages without getting things like cards and flowers and diamonds for each other and still be fine. We aren't staying together just so that we can "feel better than others" either, it's so we feel better about ourselves and our own lives because we make each other's life better just by being there.
About a year ago, I was a very dark, slightly depressed person (though you wouldn't see it from talking to me as I keep such things fairly well hidden). After meeting my girlfriend, my life started to become better almost immediately. And it didn't happen for the newfound lack of loneliness, or because I might be making people without what I have feel worse about themselves (of which I really regret if I've ever done). It also had nothing to do with fulfilling some lustful need we both had; the first few months of our relationship was online and our lives were still much better than they were before.
The reason our lives are better is because we love each other.
We would do anything for each other. We will help each other out in dark times. We're happy to just sit around and do nothing if it means being together.
And I really hope you find that some day because it is something beautiful.
It'll come from an open source equivalent. It'll take a while, but I guarantee if their product isn't very good, someone (or a group of someones) will come up with a better OSS equivalent.